Tench Coxe on the Executive Branch: President, not a King
By: Mike Maharrey American presidents behave almost like elected kings, exercising vast powers with very little accountability. But that wasn’t the plan. Tench Coxe was a key figure in ...
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How Tench Coxe Shaped the Ratification Debates: Essays of A Pennsylvanian
By: Mike Maharrey History often overlooks Tench Coxe, but he was one of the most important founding fathers. While the Federalist Papers are celebrated and widely discussed today, Coxe’s essays, written under ...
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Limited or Absolute Power: Warnings from Anti-Federalist Agrippa
By: TJ Martinell The Anti-Federalist writer Agrippa powerfully expressed many of the same reservations about the Constitution as other opponents – that it would create a consolidated government leading ...
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Mercy Otis Warren: Constitution Would “Terminate in the Most Uncontrolled Despotism”
By: TJ Martinell Mercy Otis Warren came down firmly opposed to ratification of the Constitution, and her anonymously written pamphlet titled “Observations on the new Constitution, and on the Federal ...
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Clash of the Titans: Patrick Henry and James Madison and the Virginia Ratifying Convention of 1788
by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D. Anytime anybody asks me what books I would recommend to someone who wants to learn more about the Constitution and to understand exactly what the Founding ...
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Federal Farmer Makes his Case for the Tenth Amendment
By: TJ Martinell Given the power various officers in the federal government would wield, the Federal Farmer believed that there needed to be a better mechanism to appoint them and remove ...
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Federal Farmer: Will the Judiciary Preserve or Destroy Liberty?
By: TJ Martinell While many anti-federalists, including Patrick Henry, regarded the judicial branch of the federal government under the proposed U.S. Constitution with deep suspicion, the Federal Farmer took a more ...
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Federal Farmer: Politicians and Bureaucrats must be “Recallable”
By: TJ Martinell Given the power various officers in the federal government would wield, the Federal Farmer believed that there needed to be a better mechanism to appoint them and remove ...
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The ideas that formed the Constitution: Cicero Continued
By: Rob Natelson The previous installment in this series outlined the life and career of the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero. It described how John Adams relied on Cicero’s work in the preface ...
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Federal Farmer: Representation Isn’t Sufficient
By: TJ Martinell When it was ratified, the U.S. Constitution set a cap on the number of representatives at no more than one per 30,000 persons. In his seventh letter dated Dec. ...
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